Belt and Road forum: China to forge global connections

Wang Huiyao, president and founder of the Centre for China & GlobalisationCredit:
Getty

8 May 2017 • 11:15am

Andrew Moody

Twenty-eight heads of state and government as well as delegates from 1,200 countries will attend the Belt and Road forum in Beijing.

When 28 heads of state and government as well as 1,200 delegates from countries across the world descend on Beijing on 14 May the stage will be set for a gathering that will have huge implications for the international economy for years to come.

Indeed, one Chinese expert said the Belt and Road Initiative at the centre of the talks may prove to be as important as the creation of the European Union (then European Economic Community) in 1958.

“I think it could be that significant,” said Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs and the Centre for EU Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing. “There has never before been such ambition to achieve such global connectivity,” he said, referring to the initiative, which was proposed by China’s President Xi Jinping during a speech delivered in Kazakhstan in September 2013.

One of the aims of the forum will be to move the concept from being just a China-led initiative to a multilateral one

The Beijing event, the Belt and Road Forum for International Co-operation on 14 and 15 May, “will be a landmark event for the initiative, which will enter its 2.0 phase,” Mr Wang said. “The mechanisms will be created to put forward a new type of globalisation.”

Since Mr Xi unveiled the initiative — which consists of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road — more than 40 countries and international organisations have signed co-operation agreements with China; and the country has invested some $50 billion (£39.83 billion) in mainly infrastructure projects.

One of the aims of the forum, however, will be to move the very concept from being just a China-led initiative involving bilateral agreements to a multilateral one that will help foster greater global connectivity.

Mr Xi made clear his ambitions for the Belt and Road Initiative at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January when he defended globalisation and called for countries to work together to tackle the many uncertainties in the world. “We should join hands and rise to the challenge,” he said. “History is created by the brave. Let us boost confidence, take actions and march arm-in-arm toward a bright future.”

The main tangible elements of the initiative so far are the Silk Road Fund, for which the Chinese government pledged $40 billion in 2014 for investment in countries along the routes, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, whose founding members consist of many Western countries, including Britain, France and Germany as well as leading Asian countries such as India, Pakistan and Vietnam.

Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University and once an adviser to the former prime minister Bob Hawke, believes the forum will be about making clear the initiative is for everyone and not just China.

We don’t have 100 per cent clarity as to what it is or will evolve into, but on the other hand the participants have a lot of aligned interests

“For it to work, it has got to be something that has wider ownership and acceptance than just being a Beijing initiative,” he said. “It has the potential to be something very significant. The countries participating will be involved in creating a vision and framework for globalisation for the next few decades. So it is of immense significance.”

Tom Miller, senior Asia analyst at Gavekal Research and author of the new book China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road, agrees the aim will be to make clear the initiative is very much about joint development.

“The mistake you can make about the Belt and Road Initiative is to think it is purely a Chinese project,” he said. “It just can’t be that because whatever it [China] is doing it is doing it with enterprises in other countries so it has to be about joint development.”

Edward Tse, founder and chairman of management consultancy Gao Feng Advisory, believes the Belt and Road Initiative is still at the formative stage and the forum will also be about reviewing progress as well as providing a vision for the future.

“It is critical for the whole initiative. These leaders are coming together to discuss where to go next. Belt and Road started off as a concept but the concept changed very quickly into some very tangible ideas like the AIIB [Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank] and the Silk Road Fund and some very real infrastructure projects.

“We don’t have 100 per cent clarity as to what it is or will evolve into, but on the other hand the participants have a lot of aligned interests and will want to be part of it.”

Some critics of the initiative have seen it as China trying to use it as a means of exerting greater geopolitical influence. Shen Dingli, professor of international relations and executive dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, rejects this. “We have no geopolitical agenda. It is not a strategy. At first it was bilateral but it can also be China working with two or more countries and it can also include projects in which China is not involved at all.

This article was originally produced and published by China Daily. View the original article at chinadaily.com.cn